This sermon was preached on August 4, 2019 at Canoe Ridge Lutheran Church, Decorah, Iowa for our annual outdoor worship service. This year’s liturgy focused on the land.
Every sermon feels like a work in progress, but this one even more so. Waking to the news out of Dayton, Ohio, I felt compelled to say something about the mass shootings in both Dayton and El Paso. There’s much more that could have been said…and perhaps should have been said.
I also recognize that this sermon was written for a very particular context. Even if farming is not part of your story, I hope there is some word of grace here for you.
The scripture readings that shaped this sermon are Genesis 1:9-13; Psalm 96; and Matthew 13:44. If you’d prefer to listen to it, you may find it at https://soundcloud.com/stacey-nalean-carlson/.
Genesis 1:9-13
God said, ‘Let the waters under the sky be gathered together into one place, and let the dry land appear.’ And it was so. 10God called the dry land Earth, and the waters that were gathered together he called Seas. And God saw that it was good. 11Then God said, ‘Let the earth put forth vegetation: plants yielding seed, and fruit trees of every kind on earth that bear fruit with the seed in it.’ And it was so. 12The earth brought forth vegetation: plants yielding seed of every kind, and trees of every kind bearing fruit with the seed in it. And God saw that it was good. 13And there was evening and there was morning, the third day.
Psalm 96
O sing to the Lord a new song; sing to the Lord, all the earth. Sing to the Lord, bless his name; tell of his salvation from day to day. Declare his glory among the nations, his marvelous works among all the peoples.
For great is the Lord, and greatly to be praised; he is to be revered above all gods. For all the gods of the peoples are idols, but the Lord made the heavens. Honor and majesty are before him; strength and beauty are in his sanctuary.
Ascribe to the Lord, O families of the peoples, ascribe to the Lord glory and strength. Ascribe to the Lord the glory due his name; bring an offering, and come into his courts. Worship the Lord in holy splendor; tremble before him, all the earth. Say among the nations, ‘The Lord is king! The world is firmly established; it shall never be moved. He will judge the peoples with equity.’
Let the heavens be glad, and let the earth rejoice; let the sea roar, and all that fills it; let the field exult, and everything in it. Then shall all the trees of the forest sing for joy before the Lord; for he is coming, for he is coming to judge the earth. He will judge the world with righteousness, and the peoples with his truth.
Matthew 13:44
‘The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field, which someone found and hid; then in his joy he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field.
The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field. I’ve always focused on the hidden treasure in this parable, imagining it to be a pile of gold coins in a wooden chest—the kind of thing I always hoped we might find when Grandpa took out his metal detector. But today, I’m imagining that the treasure hidden in the field is actually the field itself—a treasure one finds only in the midst of God’s good creation.
Victor Davis Hanson, farmer, philosopher, and poet, describes the land as the nursery, not merely the breadbasket, of our nation. More than merely producing food, the land yields education—teaching us to be good citizens, people of compassion and integrity who are able to live with the tension between reason and faith.
This morning, in the wake of two more mass shootings in our nation, I agree with Hanson when he writes of our country, We are parched and hungry in our quandary over how to be the good citizen—who the Greeks…said was ultimately the real, the only harvest of the soil.1
The fields around us produce corn and beans, but they also yield good citizens—people of faith who give their all to the work of tending the land, but who ultimately recognize that every last bit of it is in God’s hands.
The farmer…solved uniquely the age-old Western dilemma between reason and faith, Hanson writes, by using his reason and intellect to husband and direct the mystical world of plants, even as he accepted the limits of reason by experiencing every day a process that was ultimately unfathomable.2
Can this parable help us recognize the treasure all around us in this place? The ways in which God’s purposes for this beloved world can be seen in the black, fertile soil (a gift entrusted to us to care for, but nothing we can ultimately own); in the rows and rows of crops (that we plant, but that God grows); and in the people who love the land even when it’s not profitable to do so? How might this treasure we’ve found speak to a hurting world?
The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field, where reason meets its limits and faith recognizes the mystery of growth and harvest, life and death, love and loss, in this world God calls good. In the face of such hatred and violence in our world, can we give our all to the work of making things right (even when it costs us something to do so), while also recognizing that we are ultimately dependent on God to grow row after row of new hope beyond despair?
In his joy, the one who finds the treasure goes and sells all that he has and buys that field. The land is a treasure, worthy of joyful risk-taking. So, too, the kingdom of heaven.
Must we sell all that we have to follow Jesus wholeheartedly? Maybe not. But might we be willing to do so, recognizing that there is nothing of more value than the love of God in Christ Jesus?
Might we dig down into the soil and know that our hands are holding treasure? Might we gather what the land has produced—through a process that is ultimately unfathomable—and know that our hands are holding treasure?
Might we embrace our child, our friend, our neighbors near and far, and know that we’re holding treasure? Might we experience even the floods and droughts of life, when we cannot produce as we wish we could, as times of treasure? Times of ultimately unfathomable love, even in the midst of loss?
I give thanks to God for treasures hidden in the fields that surround us here, for treasure hidden in all of you, for the ways in which the kingdom of heaven is rooted and grows in this place.
With the trees of the forest, with the heavens and the earth, with the seas and the fields, let us sing for joy even in the midst of the struggle, trusting God to produce, through us, abundant life for all. Amen.
*** As we sang the hymn of the day following the sermon, I was so moved by the fourth stanza of For the Beauty of the Earth. Because we were using a recording, the text varied from what is contained in our hymnal…and something about these words, on this day, brought me to tears:
For Thy church which evermore lifts her lowly hands above, offering up on every shore her pure sacrifice of love. Lord of all to thee we raise this our hymn of grateful praise.
You can listen to the hymn here: https://www.youtube.com.
1, 2 The Land Was Everything: Letters from an American Farmer by Victor Davis Hanson. (Please note: this book was published in 2000. I appreciate his words that I’ve quoted here, but I am by no means endorsing his views on other matters.)